Health-care website still flawed 2 weeks into signup

11:55 AM,
Oct. 16, 2013

A Florida resident gets assistance with the health-care exchange site on Oct. 3. The website -- www.healthcare.gov -- has been unable to function correctly since it went online Oct. 1. "I am the first to acknowledge that the website that was supposed to do this all in a seamless way has had way more glitches than I think are acceptable and we've got people working around the clock to do that," President Barack Obama said Tuesday.

Written by

USA Today/Gannett

WASHINGTON - Two weeks into the launch of the federal health insurance exchange, the website is still plagued with problems, leading critics to wonder if the problem is worse than it appears.

There are two key issues at the core of the problem, said Dan Schuyler, a director at Leavitt Partners, a health-care group founded by former Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt. One is the volume, which HHS estimates at 14.6 million unique visitors, and the second is the platform's design.

The main problem, Schuyler said, could be "core fundamental design flow," but it's impossible to know ...